No Disintegrations - Terrible Troopers

Welcome one and all to another week of the insanity that is No Disintegrations. For those that didn’t see the OCTGN Tournament has ended. Congratulations to Zacky_Midnight for taking home the trophy and beating yours truly in the finals. We had a blast playing each other and I am hoping Zacky is able to make it to Worlds so that I can exact my revenge!! Don’t worry though, with the OCTGN Tournament drawing to a close there is yet another opportunity to get some OCTGN gaming in before Worlds. Top Tier Gaming is hosting an online league, for more information check out their topic here:

http://www.cardgamed...arts-sept-30th/

So speaking of a SWLCG OCTGN League, that brings us to the topic at hand. Which Dark Side deck can I run for fun that isn’t necessarily Sith Control? There have been variations on the trooper deck floating around for months now. Anta posted a version in the Deck forums, TinyGrimes and Ben talked about a version on their last podcast, TableFlip has a Trooper deck they are talking about on their next podcast, and I have gotten a few PM’s with various version over the past few weeks as well. So it seems like everyone is wanting to run Troopers and searching for the best way to do so. Currently when we are talking about Trooper decks there is a solid core that is starting to form that revolves around:

Vader’s Fist
Imperial Command
The General’s Imperative

These three objective sets are the most common backbone of Trooper decks as they provide some of the key ingredients to making the deck as a whole work. You get extra blast damage and resources from Imperial Command, extra unit damage from The General’s Imperative, and an all around good spread of Troopers from Vader’s Fist. From there you have quite a few ways to shape the deck. Most people have been continuing the Hoth theme and going with builds that include 4 more Hoth objectives. There have also been a few variations that go for extra objective damage by running AT-AT’s or Star Destroyers in any of their varieties. This second version gives you a great way to close out games, but sacrifices some of the swarm tactics that Troopers are best known for.

That brings us to the key problem with most Trooper decks in the current environment, not only are the susceptible to Targeted Strike but they also are greatly lacking in objective damage or some other way to close out a game. Swarming the board is a great tactic to hold off your opponent from being able to effectively kill off all your objectives and if you have enough units out you can swing in for a few unopposed damage here and there. You aren’t however going to be taking out 2-3 objectives a turn and ending the game on turn 3. You also aren’t going to be able to lock down your opponent’s board with massive amounts of tactics icons, thus slowing offensive side of the game down to a crawl and allowing the dial to get to 12. What then are Trooper decks left with as a sure fire win condition? As it stands if you try and stay true to the Trooper theme there aren’t a vast number of options available; however, there are still a few key objective sets that can take Troopers to that next level and make them viable.

The first thing that Troopers need is a way to stay alive, this can be accomplished with either Protect or Shields. Shielding seems like the route to take since most Trooper decks are going to be running The General’s Imperative which comes with two Blizzard Force AT-ST’s that have Shielding. Including Sabotage in the Snow then seems like a logical next step as it not only provides extra resources, but pumps up your objective damage while your units are Shielded. That leaves us with three more free spots for objectives. If we want to take the Shielding path to the extreme Unstoppable Advance is a logical addition, and it also plays nicely with General Veer’s bonus to walkers. The question becomes does the deck lose its Trooper focus and start to suffer be having to run the Imperial Affiliation? Since the goal was to build a Trooper deck I think the answer is yes to that question. So to keep that Trooper-centric theme what do we have left:

The Ultimate Power - Comes with Stormtrooper Elite which is a solid Trooper, Tarkin which makes killing objectives easier, and Superlaser Blast which can be a game ender. But it forces us to run Imperial Affiliation making Vader’s Fist a liability as our only Sith Affiliation in the deck.

Take Them Prisoner - This comes with two cheap troopers and Trooper Assault, but is a very lackluster objective overall. Tear This Ship Apart is good, but just doesn’t seem to fit what we need either.

Corporate Exploitation - Five zero cost units, that are also Troopers… that could be good. The downside is they can flood your hand with subpar units that aren’t doing much other than dying. If there is room at the end this is a good addition, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to make room for it.

Shadows on the Ice - There are no Troopers in this set, but there is Sucumb to the Cold and what should be free Wampa’s with how the deck is starting to look. I think this objective is as close to an auto include if you are running 5+ Hoth objectives as is possible.

Asteroid Pursuit - This gives us extra shields and another way to abuse that with Armed and Ready, but since you can only run one of this objective it limits the amount of consistency we get from any of these effects.

So taking a look at the remaining objectives that provide Trooper units is a bit underwhelming. The Ultimate Power on paper looks like the clear cut choice to fit into the deck, but when you realize that this means you have to switch away from the Sith Affiliation it starts to look less impressive as it hurts your ability to effectively play Vader’s Fist. If we decide to go with Shadows on the Ice that means it would be a huge benefit to fit two more Hoth objectives into our deck. Quite a few people are going with The Killing Cold as their final objective set because of this very reason. You already have fragile units that are going to be dying quite regularly so why not run The Killing Cold to make their deaths count by sacrificing them before your opponent strikes. This is definitely a viable option but does it shore up any of the issues we have with the deck, does it add survivability or extra objective damage? The answer is, not really.

The last avenue to look down is going back to our old reliable Sith buddies Darth Vader or Emperor Palpatine. Darth Vader’s objective set will offer us a very strong unit that can be given Targeted Strike and whose reaction can be quite useful, the problem is with the current Trooper core we only have one Sith Event card, and that is the Force Choke that comes with Darth Vader. So while he is a solid choice and fits well in the deck he may not be the answer to our problems. On the other hand we have Emperor Palpatine who is a huge problem in his own right for Light Side decks and he comes with Emperor’s Royal Guards which help address one of the key Trooper weaknesses. On top of that we get another resource, Force Choke, and Force Lightning which are both amazing cards and can help the Trooper deck out immensely. But by running Emperor Palpatine we are losing an extra Hoth objective and gaining no true Trooper synergy.

So where does all this leave us? It leaves us with a deck that has eight solid objectives that work very well with each other and room for two more to build on this core.

Affiliation:
Sith (Core)

Total Objective Sets: (8)

2x Imperial Command (Core)
Admiral Motti (Core)
Duty Officer (Core)
Heavy Stormtrooper Squad (Core)
Heavy Stormtrooper Squad (Core)
Orbital Bombardment (Core)

1x Shadows on the Ice (The Desolation of Hoth)
Wampa (The Desolation of Hoth)
Wampa (The Desolation of Hoth)
Succumb to the Cold! (The Desolation of Hoth)
Succumb to the Cold! (The Desolation of Hoth)
Battle of Hoth (The Desolation of Hoth)

2x The General's Imperative (Assault on Echo Base)
General Veers (Assault on Echo Base)
Blizzard Force AT-ST (Assault on Echo Base)
Blizzard Force AT-ST (Assault on Echo Base)
Turbolaser Battery (Assault on Echo Base)
Battle of Hoth (Assault on Echo Base)

1x Sabotage in the Snow (Assault on Echo Base)
Snowtrooper (Assault on Echo Base)
Snowtrooper Vanguard (Assault on Echo Base)
Forward Command Post (Assault on Echo Base)
Forward Command Post (Assault on Echo Base)
Battle of Hoth (Assault on Echo Base)

2x Vader's Fist (The Battle of Hoth)
501st Trooper (The Battle of Hoth)
501st Trooper (The Battle of Hoth)
501st Legion (The Battle of Hoth)
E-Web Heavy Repeating Blaster (The Battle of Hoth)
Battle of Hoth (The Battle of Hoth)

There are so many different ways that you can take this deck that saying X Trooper deck is the best or that Y Trooper deck does things the correct way is near impossible. What it all comes down to is how each individual player thinks the deck will run best for them against whatever they are going to be facing. There are so many ways to round out the deck that until FFG brings us a clear cut winner for the last slots in the deck it will be up in the air as to what truly makes Trooper decks the best that they can be.

Thanks again for checking in for No Disintegrations this week. If you have a deck you would like to have featured in an upcoming No Disintegrations article please feel free to post it below or PM me. As always without each and every one of the valued members here at CardgameDB.com I would be writing to no one so I thank you for your time and may the top deck always be with you!